SALT, SWEET, SEASONING AND OIL: Salt, pepper and spices really help the flavor of outdoor foods so you will want to grow or collect as many different varieties as possible. Here again, a good herb book will be of great value in recognizing such things as thyme, basil, sage, bay, pepper, garlic and such. Learn to enjoy the real taste of food, using only a little seasoning to improve and vary the taste.
Sweetness is available in the wild if you know where to look, so learn about bees and bee lining. Once you are settled, keeping bees and growing sugar beets and such will be of interest. Also, sweet syrup can be made from the sap of maple trees or the juice squeezed from corn stalks. Don't forget, carrots are sweet too.
SALT: Salt is a mineral and is taken from the ground. Most areas have a salt deposit, so watch the animals as they will seek it out. When you see them licking white rocks, you have found salt. Break off chunks of that white rock and grind it up into granules or powder. Salt may also be procured from the sea or salt lakes. Simply collect the salt water in wide, flat vessels and let it evaporate in the sun. A piece of plastic sheeting, lining a shallow depression in the dirt works especially well for collecting large quantities.
OIL: Oil or fat is one of the hardest items to find in the wild. Most wild animals are especially lean except for bears and sometimes hogs in the fall. However, cooking oil can be pressed out of corn stalks, olives, soy beans, and certain seeds, so find out what edible, cooking oil producing plants grow in your area, and learn how to retrieve the oil from them. A simple hydraulic or screw press is usually the answer. Oil floats on water, so separating the oil from the juice is easy. That is how corn oil and corn syrup can come from the same fodder...
BASICS: Try to grow potatoes, corn, carrots, beets, radishes garlic, onions, beans, squash, melons, cabbage, etc. whenever possible. These are staple vegetables and will keep well into the winter. Apples will also keep well. Eat the brown ones first. You need vitamin C, so in the absence of citrus fruit, depend upon such plant substitutes as rose hips and Arctic kiwi. Salad vegetables are only good fresh in the summer except for those you dry for stews. Onions, tomatoes, bell peppers, chili peppers fruit and such can all be dried and powdered for seasoning. They can also be canned if you have the right equipment.
PRESERVATION: Let's face it, it is hard to eat an elk all at once, so some way to keep the meat is necessary. Fortunately, there are many ways. Some of them are drying, smoking, canning or freezing. If the weather is cold enough, the clods of meat will freeze and stay frozen. In the Yukon, many people simply throw their clods of meat up on the roof to freeze. In warmer climate, drying or smoking is a good bet. If your place is set up, and you have the ability, you might like to can or cold pack some of your meat. The choice is yours.
DRYING, SMOKING AND JERKING MEAT: All three processes involve cutting the meat into thin strips and removing the fat. Drying is simply salting, peppering and hanging the strips in the shade to dry. Of course, you need dry air to do this as damp, humid air will cause the meat to spoil. Smoking adds a smoky fire to the process which dries out the air and the meat along with it. Usually in either process, salt is used as a preservative and black pepper added to keep insects away from the meat. Leave out a small piece of meat in fly season and watch them swarm over the meat. Now, shake some black pepper on the meat and watch the flies shun the meat. Now you know why salt and pepper are so valuable. There once was a time when pepper was traded ounce for ounce for gold. It may come again. Jerking meat is a gourmet process. Not only is the meat salted and peppered, but it is otherwise spiced and marinated before it is dried. The main ingredients in jerky are salt, pepper, sugar, and choice of spice. Wine or soy sauce is often added for taste. Your brand of jerky will, of course, be dictated by your taste. Anyway, once the meat is marinated, it is smoked or dried by a fire until cured. It will turn dark and gain a texture much like leather. Be sure and remove as much fat as possible as fat will cause the meat to go rancid.
PECIMIN: This is meaty trail mix. Once you have your meat jerked, you may grind it in to a sort of flour or fine shreds. Add this to a flour of ground dried fruits, berries, nuts, grains, rendered fat, salt and you have Pecimin, the old-time traveler's food. Pecimin was usually packed in a layer of lard and sold in 90 pound sacks. The reason for the lard was that in the wild, fat is the hardest thing to find. The fat was used to grease the frying pans and added to foods just the way we do it today. So Pecimin is a sort of high- energy complete food paste that is easily carried and consumed. It was eaten plain, mixed in to flavor and thicken stews, and as a base for most meals. Notice that the fat was rendered. That means that the pieces of fat were cooked down in a big pot or vat until clear. This lard was less likely to spoil or turn rancid than raw fat-- a good thing to remember.
SAUSAGE: Hog meat makes good sausage when ground and seasoned with sage, garlic, sugar, salt, and pepper. It can be preserved in its own lard if you have stone crocks. This is done in the late fall of the year when the weather has turned cold. Slaughter the hog, clean, skin and place the meat in one pile and the fat in another. Start a fire and begin to render the fat into lard in a large pot or vat. The pork rind or skin is the same as the skittles from the grocery store, so salt them and eat them the same way. When you have enough liquid lard, grind up and season your sausage and lightly fry it in a pan. Find some clean stone crocks and layer in lard, sausage patties, and lard, filling the crock in alternating layers. Top off the crock with a layer of lard and set in the shed to cool. this will keep all winter and will provide you with both good sausage and cooking fat. Make plenty!
Scrapple is a variation of sausage that can be made with bits of hog meat, rendered fat and corn meal. This ends up looking like cornmeal mush with bits of fried pork or sausage floating in it. This is usually made in a mold, old tin cans will do. It keeps well into the winter and is excellent fried and covered with syrup for breakfast.
Deer and elk also make good sausage. Wash the intestines in running water and soak in salt water to make sausage casings. Grind the meat, season and stuff into the casings, tying off the ends with string. Smoke these sausages in the smoke house or near a fire and hang them from the rafters to dry. These are a good alternative to jerky, an excellent traveling meat, and can be reconstituted with water for stews and the like.
CANNING: Canning is more complicated. You must have the proper jars, lids, rings or rubbers and vats large enough to do the job. Write the U.S. Government printing office in Pueblo, Colorado 90989 for a free catalog. Then order pamphlets on canning and cold packing.
The process is one of placing the meat, salt, pepper and spice in jars, adding water and submerging the loosely lidded jars in a water bath that comes to about an inch below the mouths of the jars. The water is then brought to a boil and kept boiling for about three and a half hours then allowed to cool down. As the jars cool, a vacuum will form within, pulling the lids down and sealing them. The outer rings are just to keep them on straight. Once the jars are sealed, they will keep for a couple of years on a cool, dark shelf.
Modern canning is done with a pressure cooker and is much safer than the water bath method. In any case, this process would require considerable equipment and a rather stable and permanent abode such as a farm or ranch to be practical. The only reason I mention it is that it tastes so good on a cold winter's day. Dump a jar of elk meat into a Dutch Oven, add a little water or milk and flour for a rich gravy and serve with fresh, hot biscuits and jelly. No complaints.
GETTING READY FOR WINTER: Summer time is when nature opens her store house to one and all, so if you are smart you will take advantage of her offer and stockpile all of the vegetables, fruits, nuts, berries and grain you possibly can. There are two main methods of preserving vegetables. One is drying, and the other is canning. Mostly, the sun will do the job, and covering your drying vegetables with cheese cloth will keep off the flies. beans and corn will dry in the field. So will most grains unless wet weather is expected. Whatever you do, don't let your dried goods get wet. Store them in a cave or other shelter, anything, as long as it's dry. The Indians used to store dry goods in big clay jars. Often, they filled up caves in the rocky mountain sides with jars of grains then sealed the cave mouths with rocks and mortar made from mud. If they did their job well, the cache escaped notice from other tribes and was preserved until they needed it. The same trick should work for you.
STAPLES: Squash, pumpkins, melons, cabbage, and the like will keep in a pile of straw. Carrots may be kept in damp sand. Potatoes can be piled as long as they are kept dry and can get air. It is best to turn them every few days. The same is true for onions and apples. Soft fruits are best preserved by drying or canning.
One of the best things you can do for yourself is to dig a root cellar into the side of a hill as soon as you can. There, you can keep your root vegetables through the winter. If dug deep enough, it will keep food cool in the summer too. Oh, don't forget about evaporative cooling. It works under primitive conditions as well as it does in modern civilizations. A wooden frame box covered with thick burlap, suspended from a tree and kept damp will keep milk, butter, cheese, meats and fruit cool in summer. The shade of the tree's foliage helps and every little breeze tends to cool the box further.
There are many things you can do to make your diet more varied and your life more pleasant. If you are smart, you'll plant several varieties of peppers and spices, including a peppercorn tree and anything else you like. Early on, it would be wise to locate a source of salt to eat and clay with which to fashion pottery and use as a building material. Now is the time to take an interest in how things used to be done. Any skills mastered now will certainly do you in good stead later when you will really need them. Remember, when high tech civilization dries up, it will stay dried up for some time.
SECURITY MEASURES: One thing about it, when you are out there, you are on your own. Security always has and will always be of interest to mankind. Now, there is strength in numbers up to a point. Then there is a hassle in numbers. However, several families can ban together in a loose-knit cooperative effort. Read a book about the Amish and you will get some idea. Let's face it, a group of people can raise houses, plant fields, harvest crops, and do any number of chores easier than one or two persons can ever expect. Civilization has just likely failed, so that is out. Perhaps, the old tribal system might work better at this time. Under this plan, several families can come together to do chores and put up a good defense. They can also look after each other when necessary or reasonable. Otherwise, they let the individual look after his own business without meddling in it. This tribal plan also provides breeding stock and mates for youngers as they come of age, making it unnecessary for the young folks to trudge off into the unknown looking for mates. This also helps keep families together so when mom and dad get old, they can stay at home and raise the grand kids while the youngers do the harder work. It all makes sense, a place for everyone, and everyone in their place.
Moreover, seldom does one person know everything there is to know, so several people pooling knowledge is a worthwhile situation This also makes possible the education of the offspring by several different teachers so that each child might grow up gaining beneficial skills and developing worthwhile talents. In other words, the knowledge of the old ones would be handed down to the youngers. Without this tribal system, the race would soon degenerate into another dark age of unknown duration.
Let's face it, the outlook for one family against the world is fairly dismal while the chances for success of a group are highly likely. Now would be a good time to form some alliances against future probabilities or at least become comfortable with the idea of blending into a group at a later date. Remember, there is security in numbers.
